Author: Kent McManigal

Problems Don’t Call For Policies

Kent McManigal

The existence of a problem doesn’t beg for a policy.

A policy will probably make more problems than it solves, especially if the policy is political in nature. Political “solutions” usually come in the form of legislation; a counterfeit “law”. And even if it does somehow manage to solve the problem, it is unethical. Legislation always is.

The statist mind is always assuming every problem needs a policy to address it. When theft and coercion is in your tool kit, that’s the lazy way to approach it. Statist “solutions” are a band-aid, not a permanent solution.

If, like me, you rule out those statist approaches automatically you’ll need to find real voluntary solutions. Voluntary solutions will be more robust and longer-lasting, too. Partly this is because people are willingly embracing these solutions. No gun in the face is needed. With political “solutions”, when the political winds shift the gun often ends up pointing the other direction. All political “solutions” are subject to change every time a new ruler is holding the gun. That’s not a real solution. Not a long-term solution. You can do better.

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Arbitrary Legality Makes Bad Laws

Kent McManigal

Recently, out of curiosity, I scanned the daily jail log for Curry County. I had never done so before and probably won’t do it again. Afterward, I felt guilty and was ashamed of myself.

I learned something interesting, though. Half of the people — five out of 10 — booked into the jail that particular day weren’t even accused of having done anything wrong; only things that have been arbitrarily declared illegal.

What’s the difference?

An act that violates an individual’s life, liberty, or property is wrong; a real crime, whether or not the law considers it a crime. These acts are wrong in and of themselves. The Latin term for this is “mala in se.”

Those booked into the jail that day and accused of having actually harmed someone were claimed to have either harmed others physically or to have violated someone’s property rights. Your main responsibility as a human is to respect the rights of others, so I have no sympathy for anyone who chooses to violate others.

This is assuming they actually did what they are accused of, which isn’t necessarily a reasonable assumption to make these days.

The other half of those jailed weren’t even suspected of harming anyone. The only justification for caging them was that they had offended the government in some way. Either they refused to identify themselves to a government employee, didn’t have the required permission papers, had forbidden substances, or tried to avoid being apprehended and kidnapped by an armed government employee. This makes these inmates political prisoners, not criminals. Even if I believed in punishment and imprisonment instead of justice, I wouldn’t believe these people deserved it. They are the real crime victims.

I understand why government would like for you and me to think of those things as crimes, but they aren’t They can’t be. Instead, these acts are “crimes” only because someone wrote legislation designating them so — a made-up rule with no ethical foundation. “Crimes” only because government employees say so. The Latin term for these acts is “mala prohibita.”

If you get aroused by punishing others, you probably don’t care. “It’s the LAW! It has to be obeyed,” you might insist.

Still, if you want your laws to be respected, you’ll first need to make them respectable. A good beginning is to get rid of all those laws based on nothing but the empty opinions of politicians.

This would eliminate all of your counterfeit mala prohibita “laws.”

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Banning Real Progress

Kent McManigal

Begging government to ban vaping makes as much sense as begging government to ban car brakes.

No, vaping isn’t totally safe. It’s safer than smoking.

Your car having brakes won’t make driving totally safe. But it’s still safer than driving without brakes.

Banning, or heavily regulating, either one is going backward. Kind of like banning (or heavily regulating) suppressors.

That doesn’t mean I want government to mandate vaping as an alternative to smoking– it should be a personal choice. You do your life, I’ll do mine.

As a tangent– I’m always shocked at the amount of dishonesty involved in trying to fool people into joining the prohibitionists (or any statist cause, for that matter).

I saw a “public service” [sic] ad against the JUUL vapers recently, where the woman was horrified that the JUUL “contains as much nicotine as 20 cigarettes!” What is this, standard-capacity magazine hysteria aimed at a different tool?

I’m supposing you don’t get all the nicotine the device contains in one inhalation. Even if you did get all the nicotine in one sitting, wouldn’t it be just like chainsmoking 20 cigarettes? I’ve seen smokers do that (OK, I didn’t count, but you know what I mean). How many cigarettes come in a pack? 20 or 25? Are you going to shove them all in your mouth at once and smoke them together? I guess you could, but I don’t think there’s a way to get the entire contents of nicotine from a JUUL in the amount of time it would take to smoke one cigarette– unless you broke it open or something. But it sounds scarier to lie. Scared people are lemmings you can lead to cry for the privilege of being governed harder. So that’s what prohibitionists do.

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Are You Being Played?

Kent McManigal

I suspect Scott Adams has been playing his listeners. I’ve suspected this for months, but have only discussed this with one person. Until now.

I’ll go ahead and tell you now what I think has been going on.

I believe he is using the technique of “pacing and leading” to get his “conservative” listeners to change their minds on “climate change” (and a few other topics as well). He plays the neutral “voice of reason” with his audience who seems to mostly be Right Statist, but he is much more Left Statist than he lets on. (I so dislike using the terms “Left” and Right” in political discussions, since there’s really only Statist or not. Yet sometimes it seems necessary to examine the interplay between these mirror images.)

Back when he first started discussing the topic, I got the distinct feeling this was what he was doing. In spite of his protests of “I’m just looking at the argument– I don’t know because I can’t know. I’m not a climate scientist.” it seemed to me he was going to take the alarmists’ side when it was all said and done. He gave clues to that effect. Because he is a government supremacist, after all.

And this is the general arc of what I’ve watched happening.

He started off leaning slightly to the skeptical side. So as to agree with the listeners he was (apparently) wanting to influence. Pacing them. He has been slowly and carefully moving slightly more to the alarmist side since then. Two steps forward and one step back. Leading them to where he seems to want them to go.

He has straight out said he uses persuasion (and hypnosis) techniques in his writing and podcasting. He has described these techniques and pointed out examples when they are used by others. Then he uses the techniques on his listeners. He’s doing it right in the open. I believe his intent is to influence his listeners to move away from Right Statism toward Left Statism– maybe to bring them to a center position.

Can I prove it? No. He would say I’m mind reading and there is no written or stated evidence that this is what he wants to do. As I’ve said before, since I can’t read minds I am left with reasoning out what someone is thinking by their actions. I could be wrong, but I doubt it. The future will tell.

I still listen to Scott because I find him interesting and because I still find it informative to get insight into the workings of the statist mind. But I try to mentally vaccinate myself against his persuasion while doing so by knowing what he’s doing. Who knows if I’m protected sufficiently.

Years ago, when I first started reading his Dilbert blog, he once claimed to be “libertarian, but without the crazy stuff“. I pointed out that the “crazy stuff”, as he defined it, is also called consistency. Consistency, based in principles. Things which get in the way of a full-on embrace of statism. Once you believe it’s OK to govern others and use government violence to force others to do what you want and stop them from doing what you don’t want them to do, there seems to be nothing that’s too far to justify. This is the road he travels. He expects you to follow. And he may be tricking people into following him.

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“Intellectual”

Kent McManigal

“Intellectual” is not a dirty word. It disturbs me how often it is used as one.

On the other hand, many of those who are called “intellectuals”– particularly “public intellectuals”– are really just government extremists and elitists. They may have degrees and positions, but their position on issues is anti-intellectual. They follow the religion of statism and worship the god of government.

It is not rational to be a statist. It is vulgar to believe people should be governed by others, and to use politics as a tool for this purpose. Any illiterate punk might believe the same thing, but without claiming the “authority” to force everyone to go along.

They believe they know better how to run your life than you do. And they are willing to use government violence to prove it.

These people may be clever. They may be smart in some ways. But their ignorance and emotionalism overwhelm their intellect. They betray their own intellectualism with their belief system. They’ve decided which is more important to them, personally. And it’s a shame.

Think of all the good they could have otherwise done if they are really as “intellectual” as they are made out to be. The world is poorer for having lost their contributions. When you side with darkness and ignorance– with statism– your intellect, if any, becomes a net negative to society.

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My Provisional Support For “Borders”

Kent McManigal

The only legitimate justification for something like a “national border” would be to separate a free territory from any unfree territories around it. In order to protect the people in the free territory from the statists surrounding them.

This situation doesn’t exist anywhere in the world because there are no free territories (other than small scale experiments, maybe). America hasn’t been a free territory since America was replaced by “the United States” with the ratification of the U. S. Constitution. As long as there are “taxes” and other counterfeit “laws” and politicians in a territory, it is not free. Even though there are differences in degree, there are no differences in kind.

As it is, national borders are rather like the internal fences in a feedlot. They separate different groups of cattle from each other for the purposes of those who exploit them. It’s not for the good of the cattle. It would be genius to brainwash the cattle into believing it is.

In our human situation, it’s as if the cattle in one pen are getting angry at the cattle who hop the fence instead of focusing their anger at those who manage the feedlot. “We must remain ‘King of the Dung Heap’ in our little pen!”

Those humans who hop the fence may be hoping to avoid a looming appointment on the kill floor, or maybe they hope for more food on the other side. But if they are looking for liberty they are doing it wrong and looking in the wrong place. Still, I can’t blame them for doing something in their desperation, even if it amounts to jumping out of the fire and into the smoldering kindling.

And, the ones who hop the fence and then demand to make this side similar to the side they were desperate to escape are being stupid and are committing evil.

To be clear: nothing excuses archation by fence hoppers. Nor by fence defenders.

Instead of abandoning principles over your “border”, why not make this side of the fence free. Create a condition of liberty. That means zero “taxes”, zero counterfeit “laws” of any kind, and zero politicians. This side of the fence cannot be a State.

Then, and only then, I’ll help you secure the border from anyone who tries to bring a little bit of archation into this free territory– while welcoming all others (because they couldn’t be a problem). Anyone else should be free to cross this border in either direction with no delay or difficulty whatsoever.

Because it’s always up to the believers to convince the skeptics, it’s up to those who support the “borders” to make this a free territory and convince me to support their walls and fences. If they have a workable plan which doesn’t involve me compromising food with poison or liberty with statism, I’ll jump right in.

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